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Ireland Outlaws Blasphemy

By Robert Mackey July 24, 2009 1:09 pmJuly 24, 2009 1:09 pm

An illustration of the trouble blasphemers can cause.

After some hesitation, Ireland’s president, Mary McAleese, signed into law on Thursday a controversial new measure which makes it a crime, punishable by a fine of up to $35,000, to publish or utter blasphemous statements in the Irish Republic.

As The Irish Times explained in April, the new law was crafted after someone noticed that while the country’s constitution clearly calls blasphemy a criminal act, Irish legislators had failed to give the nation’s police force the legal means to hold blasphemers to account.

The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent material is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.

As of Thursday, Ireland now has such a law on the books. Even before the law was signed, a group of Irish atheists began a campaign “for the repeal of this anachronistic and dangerous blasphemy law, and for a referendum to remove the blasphemy reference from the Irish Constitution.” The group’s first step will be to intentionally break the law by publishing a blasphemous statement and defending their right to blaspheme in court.

Michael Nugent, a writer and co-founder of Atheist Ireland, called the new law “both silly and dangerous” in an opinion piece published by The Irish Times this month. According to Mr. Nugent:

It is silly because it revives a medieval religious crime in a modern pluralist republic. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, by making it the first trigger for defining blasphemy.

The problematic behaviour here is the outrage, not the expression of different beliefs. Instead of incentivising outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting.

The Irish atheists have also proposed amending Ireland’s constitution to remove other references to religious belief, including those deeply embedded in the very first words of its preamble, which begins:

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Eire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ […]

Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

While Irish Catholics will no doubt oppose moves to make such sweeping changes to the constitution, one of the curious features of the debate over the new blasphemy law is that, as Padraig Reidy pointed out in The Guardian, there seems to be almost no public support for it among religious leaders in the country. As one reader wrote to The Irish Times last week:

I have yet to find a single religious person who supports the blasphemy law. Most seem to regard it as placing unacceptable limitations on personal freedom and conscience. Many also recognise that, ironically, the law represents a deeply impoverished view of God, whose dignity and goodness cannot be lessened by any words of ours.

In fairness to Irish lawmakers, it should be noted that six American states — Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wyoming — still have laws against blasphemy on the books, although they are only occasionally enforced in the 21st century.

Earlier this year, a legal challenge was mounted to have Pennsylvania’s law against blasphemy declared unconstitutional, after a filmmaker was told by the state that he could not name his business I Choose Hell Productions. According to a Pennsylvania rule, the filmmaker was informed, business names “may not contain words that constitute blasphemy, profane cursing or swearing or that profane the Lord’s name.”

As most groups do these days, American blasphemers now have a Web site and a YouTube channel. It might not be long before Irish blasphemers follow suit.

Is “blasphemy” even defined in the law? It seems that almost any theological statement is going to be irreverent with respect to someone’s religion.

Or to address it from the other angle, only a $35,000 fine? Why not take it all the way and issue a fatwa for their deaths? Since, after all, Ireland is the land where, more than anywhere else, Christians have done their best to show that nominally-religious terrorism is not the sole province of Islam, maybe they should adopt some of Islam’s other worst habits.

The religious zealots have already attempted to regulate people’s bodies. These attempts are not only done in vane, but are clearly at the detriment of the population’s health. I traveled to Ireland several years ago and discovered an aborted fetus on the ground of a cave next to Cork Castle. One can only speculate whether the woman subjected to this procedure survived.

Now another foolish act will attempt to stifle an individual’s freedom in the name of an abstraction to whom only an individual’s faith and devotion truly matters. Simply ridiculous… on the upside at least Americans are outdone by another western nation in terms of absurd and irrational piety.

Reminds me of a story: Irishman Steven was a strident atheist but unfortunately he died and much to his surprise awoke at the Gates of Heaven. There was God busy with the sorting of souls. When God saw Steven, He said, “Hey, I know you. You were the guy who didn’t think I existed.” After some lengthy chuckling He said, “No matter I’ll give you that but the Irish government is going to He…”

The blasphemy police are going to be quite busy. All those books, all those song lyrics, all those poems, half of Ulster and the penchant for speaking freely at the pub. And of course warning tourists as they get off the plane ….

The sole purpose behind this is to provoke outrage (as it has done) in order to divert attention away from the horrifically incompetent and unethical performance of the Government of the past 10 years. They squandered billions in tax payers’ money and put policies in place that ensured the economic collapse that Ireland is now experiencing. The best anyone can do in response is to ignore this attempt at taking our focus from demanding accountability from this cabal of criminals (note: I do not propose that any political party in Ireland would have acted in the peoples’ interest, just that this group were the very worst).

One would wonder if this is an attempt by the governing body to hinder any future legal actions following the document released recently outlining the criminal acts that had taken place in the state supported catholic reform schools. Would the release of such information be considered blasphemy? As a non believer, I consider statements claiming that the earth was created 6,000 years ago logical blasphemy. Can I too expect punishment of such individuals?

this is a pointless piece of legislation, for which there is zero public support in Ireland. Why the lame duck Fianna Fáil coalition government thought this was a legislative priority with everything else that’s gone wrong in Ireland this year is beyond me.

However, it is in our constitution and to change the constitution, you have to hold a referendum, which is time-consuming and expensive.

They should still have had the referendum anyway but until they do that, if you have a written constitution then the government has to abide by it.

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